SEO is like pulling teeth.
It can be painful. And if you’re a dentist, it pays the bills.
I’m here to make sure SEO is as painless as possible for your dental practice. And that your bills get paid (and then some) because of it.
I built UppercutSEO to solve the SEO problem for dentists exactly like you — the busy, hard-working dental professionals just trying to build a business that lasts.
Below, I’m going to show you EXACTLY how we can help. And why dentist SEO is worth investing in. Let’s do this.
For dentists, SEO is a set of tasks and processes meant to do one thing: make your dental practice more visible in search engines like Google so you get more patients.
That means showing up at the TOP of search results for relevant keywords. Like this:
And in Google Maps:
If you run your own dental practice, I bet that sounds pretty good. But trust me when I tell you that you’re FAR from the only dentist in town thinking the same thing.
That’s why dental SEO is so competitive.
To actually get to the top isn’t a matter of simply doing SEO. It’s a matter of doing SEO the RIGHT way.
That means investing heavily in:
If you’re outsourcing that — as most dentists do — it also means trusting the right SEO company or practitioner to do all of that for you.
While we’re on that subject, let’s talk a bit more about doing SEO yourself versus hiring it out.
Can you do your own SEO as a dentist? Sure you can.
But you probably won’t get it right. Or have the time. Or some combination of those two problems.
Look — it’s not that I think you’re incapable of it.
It’s just that I wouldn’t trust me to do a root canal, but I would trust me to do SEO for dentists.I wouldn’t trust you to do SEO for MY website, but I would trust you to do a root canal.
You get the idea.
With time and plenty of room for error — like in dental school — I could learn to do dentistry. With time and plenty of room for error — like on a website that isn’t your ONLY business website — you could learn SEO.
The benefit of hiring out SEO services is that, ostensibly, the people doing your SEO have already learned how to do SEO. They aren’t going to make rookie mistakes that can hamper your growth or tank your website.
Yes, you can try to do your own SEO. And I encourage at least learning a little about it before you pay someone else to do it.
But, ultimately, 99 percent of dentists I know don’t do their own SEO successfully. Many choose to outsource their dental practice’s SEO.
But then they encounter another problem:
MANY of the so-called SEO professionals out there are no better at SEO than you would be if you picked up and started out tomorrow.
In fact, some are doing risky SEO practices that will actually HARM your SEO, rather than simply not helping it.
How do you know who, exactly, is going to get it right so your dental practice can actually grow? I’m not going to lie: It’s hard.
But you’re in the right place already.
Why trust UppercutSEO with your dental SEO? Because our team has been doing this for collective decades.
Because we’ve ranked service businesses like yours in the most competitive locations on the planet: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Seattle, and more.
Because I built a dental SEO agency from the ground up. Then I started UppercutSEO to make dental SEO even better.
To cut through the BSers and posers. To actually deliver on the promises we make as SEOs.
Of course, just like your dental office, I’m not the only game in town. Plenty of other SEO agencies can boast decades of collective experience and even have some results to show for it.
But do they have a custom, proprietary SEO dashboard that offers COMPLETE transparency?
Uppercut does, but they don’t. You know why? Because that would show the wasted budget. The missed deadlines. The false promises.
Meanwhile, we give you total transparency:
And it’s more than that. We give you total transparency AND total access to our unbeatable team of SEO experts.
Any SEO question you have, you get an answer. Any SEO problem you have, you get a solution. Fast.
And we’re happy to wait while you give other agencies a shot. We’ll be here when they fail.
All right — let’s take a break from all the sales and marketing talk and get down to what really matters: how to do SEO for a dental office.
The list of steps below is by no means an exhaustive one. But it’s enough to get you started (and make you dangerous in any future discussion with potential SEO providers).
Let’s do it:
When I say “Google-friendly,” I’m really talking about technical SEO. In other words, making sure your webpages are actually getting added to Google’s index and served in search results.
The quickest and easiest way to make sure you’re most of the way there if you’re a total beginner is with a simple site:search.
Here’s how it works:
Here’s what it looks like when I do it for my site:
If you see a bunch of your website pages, you’ve got a relatively Google-friendly website. If you don’t, you probably have a technical SEO issue and need to contact an SEO professional.
Next, you have to find keywords you actually want your website to rank for in Google. That’s going to involve a process called keyword research.
But first, I’ll give you a freebie: [your city] dentist
Like this:
And so on. Those are going to be some of your highest-value keywords.
But they’re not the only keywords you’ll want to rank for. You might also want to rank for keywords like this:
There are SO many more. And keyword research is how you uncover them.
I’m not going to get into the many ways to do keyword research. But I will say that, to do proper dental keyword research yourself, you’re likely going to need an SEO tool. Such as:
Within each of those tools, you’ll see various ways to uncover keywords. These usually include searching through the tools’ keyword databases and seeing what your competitors are ranking for.
Once you’ve identified which keywords you want your dental practice to rank for, it’s time to start creating content around those keywords.
This is where it gets tricky for a lot of you science-minded dentists. You’re super smart, but you might not be the most creative writer.
But you’re going to have to sharpen those writing skills if you want to create content that Google actually wants to rank for your target keywords. (Or prepare to pay a writer or SEO agency to create the content for you.)
Basically, you need a blog post or landing page for each keyword you’ve identified. Blog posts for “long-tail” question-style keywords. Landing pages for dental services pages (like “Austin Dentist”).
You write to the keyword, meaning you write what the Google searcher is intending to see when they Google that keyword.
So, if the keyword is a question, you answer that question. If it’s about a particular dental service, you describe the service and what your practice offers.
A lot of people overcomplicate it, but that’s really what it’s all about: creating content that serves the “search intent” of the keyword you’d like to rank for.
Oh, and don’t forget to include your keyword in the following places:
This helps Google understand that your page is all about the keyword in question. Which makes it more likely to rank (and rank highly) for the keyword.
With your content created and published, it’s time actually to make it outrank your competitors’ content. In dental SEO, there’s pretty much one way to do that:
Backlinks.
These are links on OTHER websites that point back to your website.
From the very beginning of Google, the search engine has used backlinks to understand which sites should rank well for particular keywords. Google sees backlinks as “votes” for your site’s quality and relevance.
In other words:
More backlinks to your dental website, better rankings.
How do you actually get backlinks, though? It’s tricky.
There are TONS of link building methods: broken link building, the skyscraper technique, buying guest posts, link insertions, and so on.
But the average dentist isn’t linked in to all of those methods, and getting a scalable link building process built around any of them is a pretty tall order when you’re already strapped for time.
That’s why so many businesses like yours want to take advantage of UppercutSEO’s industry-leading link building services.
We give you high-quality, relevant backlinks with optimized anchor text. As many as you need. When you need them.
Trust me: If you outsource NOTHING else for your dental SEO, outsource this. It’s an investment that will yield rankings and traffic returns that you can hardly believe.
You’ll notice that they have a DR of only 27 – which is not high by normal standards, but it’s good enough to win in Austin. And, see “Backlinks” and “Ref. Domains”? They only have 140 referring domains. That’s easy to reach and beat if you subscribe to our monthly link building package.
Dental practices are local businesses. So you need local SEO. But what is local SEO for dentists, exactly?
It’s about two things, primarily:
When I say ranking in Google Maps, I mean showing up in the top spots when someone goes to Maps and searches “dentist.”
Like this:
And when I say ranking for searches with local intent, I mean showing up in the top spots for regular Google results when people search things like this:
The Maps part is primarily about your Google Business Profile — a free business listing from Google.
The idea is to claim and fully optimize your Google Business Profile, which looks like this:
That means filling out ALL business information, posting regularly, and encouraging and responding to patient reviews.
Over time, you’ll become more prominent in Maps searches and the so-called “Map Pack” of map-based rankings in regular search results.
As for the local search queries part, that goes back to great content and powerful backlinks.
There’s A LOT more to local SEO — such as local citations, directory listings, and local links — but that stuff is a little “in the weeds” for this entry-level guide to dentist SEO. But, if you have questions about that stuff, please feel free to reach out to my team.
That’s all great to know, but ultimately, you’re not going to have time to do it all. At least not without cutting corners.
And when you cut corners, Google notices. That’s why so many dental practices devote some of their marketing budget to paying a dentist SEO agency like UppercutSEO.
With UppercutSEO, you get a custom dashboard, an elite team of dental SEO experts, and real, measurable growth.
You won’t find that anywhere else. I can promise you that.
If you want to learn more, set up a free consultation with my team. And if you’re ready to dive in, claim your FREE SEO dashboard right now (no credit card required).
We’re looking forward to helping your dental practice get to where it needs to be.
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